Why would someone feel so bad and stupid if they made a mistake or got something wrong?

Question

like it's the end of the world?

Answer 1

Guilt is a ploy that the ego uses to keep us afraid to venture out into love.

Love dissolves the ego and shows that we are all one, all our minds are connected and not isolated people in separate bodies as the ego wants us to believe..

Answer 2

It very well could have been. Case in point. Car with a manual transmission at a stop sign. Can someone explain why I shifted into reverse and damned near took out the three cars behind me? Should I not feel totally stupid? Because I do!

Answer 3

For many reasons, really. No offence to anyone out there with this problem (as perhaps I do have this problem also) but it could be about self-esteem issues. It could also be how screwed our society is and the ****** up ideas of being "perfect" or "normal". People are afraid to do the wrong things because we all want to belong.

Answer 4

We learn from life that there are winners and losers.  Often one winner and many losers.  This is idiotic, of course: Just because in a race of a hundred people, one is first at the finish line, does not mean that the others didn't  race well

I think a lot of this comes from being in an intensely capitalist culture with competition being the main emphasis.

This makes others eager to put us down when we make a mistake, so that they can feel better about themselves, if only for a few moments (before something makes them feel bad about themselves again).

So we wind up buying this gameplan, this attitude, which is a mistake.  It's "all or nothing thinking." "I'm either doing great or s******g up."

The reality is that we learn better from our mistakes than our successes.  Our successes make us feel good, temporarily, but our mistakes teach us.

Monitor your thinking.  Learn to notice mistakes, draw from them anything you can learn ("Boy, I won't do that again") and move on, putting them out of mind.  They are important only to learn from.  our successes, on the other hand, are important to your self image.  Make a big deal out of them (to yourself, not in front of others), congratulate yourself, etc.

Here's a book I highly recommend that could help you a lot.  Check it out and the reader reviews here:

http://www.amazon.com/Ten-Days-Self-Este...